LOST RECAP: There Will Be Blood, And Arms

The following is a recap of Lost Season 5, Episode 5, dramatically titled “This Place Is Death”, originally airing February 11, 2009. If you haven’t watched the episode yet, why are you even reading this Italics sh*t?

SMOKEY MAKES A CAMEO

Jin and his newfound French scientist cronies quickly stumbled upon the Smoke Monster, who we haven’t seen since abouttttttt the pilot episode, if my memory serves me right. Smokey wasn’t just his usual reflect-your-life madness-inspirer either; he immediately zoomed into Eko mode, slamming one woman to death then pulling another scientist to his arm-ripping doom in one of the more gruesome Lost moments to date (still only about 1/1000th as disturbing as the ‘Ben hitting on Juliet’ flashback episode).

Jin witnesses these horrors, then watches pregnant-Rousseau’s babydaddy try to shoot her but she shoots him in a three-minutes-later flash-forward, and Jin ultimately forces Locke to promise not to bring Sun back to the island. Locke ‘agrees,’ then quickly yells “Psych-nawww!!! My toes were crossed!” before jumping down a well and disappearing. I was really hoping that when Jin handed his wedding ring over to Locke, he’d then immediately turn to Juliet and say “I single now. So… you coming here often?”

Also, when Jin finally met up with the islanders and Sawyer told him to freeze, did he really not recognize Sawyer’s voice? It couldn’t have been more obviously Sawyer if he had yelled “Y’all better hold it right there, Miley Cyrus — Soonnnnofabitch!”

THE OCEANIC TWO

Meanwhile in L.A., Ben very quickly talked Sun down from her murderous rage, and though he alienated Kate and Sayid from the group, he succeeded in getting Sun on board by showing her Jin’s wedding ring and conveniently leaving out the backstory of Jin giving it to Locke to prove to Sun he was dead. Sun, like every Lost viewer, should have understood that no one on this show is frickin’ dead until their severed head gets hit by a flaming arrow then explodes then Jacob pees on it (and even then, they’ll be back a week later in ghost form).

The only part of last night’s episode that didn’t make sense to me was the ending, when Ben, Jack, Sun, and (coincidentally) Desmond descended on Ms. Hawking’s church, thus semi-confirming her as Faraday’s mother (I’ve predicted three things correctly this season! Pushing my career total to…three. Move over, Doc Jensen!) For two seasons now, we’ve known that Ben and Locke both require all six Oceanics to be together for a successful return to the island, but when Ben presented Jack and Sun as “all I could get on short notice,” Ms. Hawking immediately seemed cool with it. But then, in the scenes from next week’s episode, Ben and Jack were re-convincing the other 4 Oceanics to come with them, implying that it wasn’t ok that Ben only rounded up 2, but Lost had to end the episode on an exciting line, so they just had Hawking say “Alright, let’s get started!” [CRAZY MUSIC, END TITLER!] Next week’s episode will open with Hawking saying “Ok but seriously, we need the other four. Just ran out of time last week and needed a cool line.”

LOCKE RE-ENACTS PASSION OF THE CHRIST

Locke falls down a well and suffers a Jason Kendall-esque bone-jutting-out-of-the-leg injury (awesomely violent episode in general, you could hear ABC yelling ‘suck it, Fringe!’) and there encounters Jacob in his Christian Shephard costume. Jacob re-iterates that he needed Locke specifically to move the island (though that’s really his own fault for not being clear), adding “what has trusting Ben ever gotten anyone?”, and tells Locke that he can travel back to land by moving the donkey wheel, also reaffirming that Locke is going to have to ‘die.’ The freshly crippled Locke reaches new heights of Jesus imagery when he stumbles towards the wheel, because apparently he’s too embarrassed to hop on one foot in front of Jacob, and who wouldn’t be?

I’m not sure if Jacob’s comment implies that Ben knowingly moved the island himself with some ulterior motive or if he simply misunderstood the prophecy and is now rectifying the situation. Both Locke and Ben have the same goal of returning the Oceanic Six to the island, but do they truly have the same purpose? I’m betting Ben definitely has something cool and evil up his cool-and-evil sleeve.

ANYONE HAVE CHARLOTTE IN THEIR OFFICE DEATH POOL?

Charlotte’s time-travel condition rapidly worsened this week as she devolved into spouting random non sequiturs from her past before recounting to Faraday that she spent her childhood on the island, then left with her mother and never saw her father (Charlie Wids?) again. She then declares that someone told her that she’d die if she came back to the island (not unlike Jin’s message for Sun, eh?) and that she’s pretty sure…that person…WAS DANIEL! Daniel reacts with an unmistakable “whoa, really, Lost producers?” expression:

My friend raised the point, why doesn’t Faraday explain the idea of constants to the time-traveling islanders instead of letting them die, especially Charlotte? The answer, I suppose, is that people can’t obtain constants while they’re already in mid time-travel, and Faraday is just trying to help his pals through the pain while sparing them the worry that they’ll die if the Six don’t come back and there’s nothing else he can do except explain scientific things using everyday things as examples.

LOSTDS AND ENDS

– Does everyone speak every language? Seriously, Lost is starting to make me feel inadequate, like when I visit foreign countries and all the eight-year-olds speak like four languages fluently, and I’m like “I know some Spanish kind of!” Charlotte was not joking when she said she spoke Klingon.

— WTF line of the night, from French scientist, about his female companion: “She’s probably off chasing a butterfly!” Is that a stereotype, or even an insult? Who doesn’t love butterflies? And if one appeared on the island, I’m sure it’d be super significant and generate 50,000 theories, so eat it, Frenchie McDeaderson.

— If the time flashes get any more frequent, Lost is just gonna turn into the Ray of Light music video.

In general, another really solid episode that kept the “answered more questions than it raised” streak rolling at four weeks. Lost almost feels like a different show this season, in a good way; the episodes are sequential, they run the same themes week to week rather than showing Hurley discovering a bus then revisiting it a decade later, they’re exciting, and they all feel legitimately interesting and tense rather than just aloof and confusing for the sake of it. I’m really interested to find out what Ben’s true motivation to get people back to the island is, too — I think we’re gonna be in for a lot of “NO F***ING WAY!”s after the next “LOST” season-ending title screen.